Monday, February 16, 2009

Brevitudinousness is the soul of witlessness

Around 1964 he and his long-time collaborator Harry Harrison started the first ever journal of science fiction criticism, Science Fiction Horizons, which during its brief span of two issues published articles and reviews by such authors as James Blish, and featured a discussion among Aldiss, C. S. Lewis, and Kingsley Amis in the first issues, and an interview with William S. Burroughs in the second...

Brief span? I'll say! You can't get much briefer than two issues. There's a glorious first issue, which announces its hopes and intentions introduces a whole bunch of interesting authors; and then there's the sorrowful last issue, announcing the difficult financial circumstances it's encountered, and the reasons why it's had to fold, and apologising to the reading public. This run is so brief that the first issue is also the penultimate issue.

Come to think of it, is a magazine that only runs for one issue even a magazine?